Monday, 2 June 2014

Never, ever expect me to believe someone when they blather on about morality needing divine sourcing. And don't bother with the "No True Scotsman" fallacy that people, especially those noted below, weren't authentically 'Christian'. When we talk about the horrors of the Residential schools across Canada for Indigenous children and the "Christian Brothers" for their wards in Newfoundland, we should always keep in mind that the systemic, State-approved, religiously run prisons (because that's what they are when people are locked into them with no chance to leave of their own free will) were honed in Europe for generations before being exported to the 'new world'.

How many children that survived this kind of torture and abuse went on to exist as spirit-mutilated adults, and even torturers of children in their turn? What else had they learned at the hands of the 'merciful', 'civilizing', 'soul saving' regimes? We're all harmed by this kind of malfeasant crushing of the young and vulnerable.

The fact of the matter is that no one did anything, no one cared about these children because bastards didn’t matter. The Catholic claim of “Every Child is Sacred” was a lie (yet again) and in being holier than thou the Church forgot what the world humane means.

Just remember, what was done in Ireland in its Homes and Magdalene Laundries are the result of theocratic control of women's bodies being given free rein inside a society. Only now, in increasingly secular societies, is the hypocrisy and bloody ledgers of theocrats coming to light. Remember this and those who paid the ultimate price, when someone tries to convince you churches know how to deal with pregnant women and uppity children.

Please don't say such tortures were 'behaviour of the culture of the time', which makes it okey dokey to dismiss. I loathe that handwaving excuse, which is handily trotted out by those who framed the 'morality' punishments in the first place...no conflict of interest there...much. There are many contemporary accounts in 'the time' that counter such apologistics, but the key is, opposition was not wielded by the State and in far too many cases, the State was complicit with religious authorities to maintain the illusion of 'moral authenticity' in a Herculean cognitive dissonance and, not incidentally, desire to keep the populace at large from turning on them.

The same sort of unaccountable 'correction' of those deemed 'morally deficient' is being demanded right-bloody-now by religious institutions and leaders. There's no shortage even now, of religiously-based 'retreats' where adolescent girls and boys are sent, willingly or not, where they are forcibly confined and experience a range of extra-legal punishment they're not supposed to expose to the greater community. There's no shortage now of "pregnancy centres" run by religious folks, whose main outcome is to shame pregnant women into continuing their pregnancies, no matter the burden to the woman in question...but don't count on them for actual support of the pregnancy or following motherhood. And that's without State backing and *with* the growing influence of the information flow along the intertubes.

Yeah, yeah, I know. It can't happen here, except ithas, and it can't happen now...so long as we in Canada make certain it doesn't. We owe it to those whose suffering and deaths is our signpost.